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Asa Ames (1823–1851) was an American sculptor from Erie County, New York. While most details concerning his life remain a mystery, recent research has established Ames as a significant figure in American folk art. Within his brief career from 1847 to his death in 1851, Ames created a series of three-dimensional portraits of family members, neighbors, and friends. His woodcarvings of children and young adults have garnered the most attention. Fourteen woodcarvings have been attributed to Ames. His works are currently at the following institutions: the American Folk Art Museum, the New York State Historical Association, the Huntington Art Museum, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, the Boulder History Museum, and the Wadsworth Atheneum. ==Life== Asa Ames was born on December 28, 1823, in Evans, New York, some twenty miles south of Buffalo. His parents, John Ames (1791–1830) and Susan Gates Ames, had recently moved there from Worcester County, Massachusetts, probably in anticipation of the greater economic opportunity to come with the opening of the Erie Canal, which followed in 1825. After the death of John Ames in 1830, when Asa was seven, his mother remarried in 1842, to Elias Babcock, but was to be widowed a second time two years later. Asa was the fourth of five children, with his siblings and their families playing an important part in his career; at least four of Ames's known oeuvre of 13 works portray family members. Others portray neighbors in Evans, some of whom Ames lived with for a time. His work as a sculptor is therefore deeply rooted in his kinship network and local community, a fact interestingly in tension with other aspects of Ames's career which point to the rising tide of modernity, notably his interest in phrenology (see below). Ames died in 1851, probably of tuberculosis, with his tombstone giving his final age as "27 years, 7 months, and 7 days."〔http://www.folkartmuseum.org/sites/folk/files/Ames_FolkArt.pdf〕 His name would not be recovered by art historians until 1977, when Jack T. Ericson discovered it in the Evans census of 1850; publication followed five years later in 1982, establishing the basis for subsequent scholarship.〔http://www.folkartmuseum.org/sites/folk/files/Ames_TMA.pdf〕 Since then Asa Ames has assumed an eminent place in the history of American art as a leading folk sculptor of the 19th century. Ames's short life is sparely documented. The dates of his birth and death are known by his tombstone, other details (including his occupation, described as "sculpturing") by a local census of 1850, with the gaps in the record skilfully reconstructed by art historians on the basis of 13 works (signed and unsigned, the latter attributions grounded on style and provenance) and the web of connections they have revealed.〔http://www.folkartmuseum.org/sites/folk/files/Ames_TMA.pdf〕〔http://www.folkartmuseum.org/sites/folk/files/Ames_FolkArt.pdf〕 Additionally, ancestors of Asa Ames have proved helpful to historians by making accessible family records, which show that Ames was married to a woman named Emma (probably Emma Hurd of the Marvin household, where Ames was resident at the time of the 1850 census) shortly before his death.〔http://www.folkartmuseum.org/sites/folk/files/Ames_FolkArt.pdf〕 Even more significantly, the Ames family has helped identify subjects of the sculptors' portraits. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Asa Ames」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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